Steve Jobs Reiterates: "Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone"

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs is on a roll. While he’s probably had better days than today, he’s lately been shooting off emails left and right in response to customers’ concerns. We just were sent what appears to be one such Jobs response, sent last week surrounding the whole Mark Fiore situation. And it’s a good one.

When questioned about Apple’s role as moral police in the App Store, Jobs responds that “we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.” Better, is what he said next: “Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.”

Last week, another Jobs email about the Fiore situation was published in which Jobs called the situation a “mistake.” He noted the same thing in this email, but the porn/Android link is the key here. Assuming this email is legit, this isn’t the first time Jobs has suggested users try Android if they want porn. Earlier this month, during a Q&A session after the iPhone 4.0 OS event, Jobs said:

You know, there’s a porn store for Android. You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go – so we’re not going to go there.

This is noteworthy both because it’s funny, and because Apple and Google are in the early stages of a war that’s brewing between the iPhone and Google’s Android platform. Jobs is apparently going to keep taking these jabs from what he considers to be the moral high-ground.

Read the full back-and-forth below:

Matthew Browing, an Apple customer wrote the following to Jobs:

Steve,
I was converted to Apple products with the announcement of the iPhone 3G. (My friends have been trying to convince me for years.) Since then I’ve purchased 4 iPhones, 2 computers, several routers, and miscellaneous other items. Unfortunately, I’m really starting to have a philosophical issue with your company. It appears that more and more Apple is determining for it’s consumers what content they should be able to receive. For instance, the blocking of Mark Fiore’s comic app (due to being political satire) or blocking of what Apple considers to be porn.

I’m all for keeping porn out of kids hands. Heck – I’m all for ensuring that I don’t have to see it unless I want to. But… that’s what parental controls are for. Put these types of apps into categories and allow them to be blocked by their parents should they want to.

Apple’s role isn’t moral police – Apple’s role is to design and produce really cool gadgets that do what the consumer wants them to do.

Thanks for listening

-Matthew

In response, Jobs replied:

Fiore’s app will be in the store shortly. That was a mistake. However, we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and Android phone.

Yes, Jobs apparently made a typo (and -> an), but we checked the IP headers on the email and they are legit. Of course, these can be faked, but it seems hard to believe that someone would go to all the work of sending us an email in which they changed all the IPs or manipulated all the time elements only to attach their real name and real email address to send it to us.

And no, the email doesn’t end with the usual “sent from my iPhone” or the new favorite, “sent from my iPad,” but again, looking at the header information, that’s because it was sent using Apple Mail. Jobs has been known to do this in the past (and recently) as well.

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DescriptionAndroid is a software platform for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in Java that utilizes Google-developed software libraries, but does not support programs developed in native code.
The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open …

DescriptionApple's iPhone was introduced at MacWorld in January 2007 and officially went on sale June 29, 2007, selling 146,000 units within the first weekend of launch. The phone has been hailed as revolutionary with its bundle of advanced mobile web browsing, music and video playback, and touch screen controls. The iPhone is exclusively carried on the networks of both AT&T and Verizon in the U.S.
An iPhone …